Policy, milk and the Dar es Salaam peri-urban zone: a new future for an old development theme?

This paper provides an analysis of 50 years of policy aimed at ensuring an adequate milk supply to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Despite a variety of policy approaches and initiatives, providing the city with milk continues to be problematic. The use of the peri-urban zone for dairy production is one of several recurring themes, however, even with an expanding market there has been relatively little development of commercial dairying in this zone. This history is used to assess the more recent interest in the potential contribution of the peri-urban zone to sustainable urban food supplies. The paper argues that policy and development initiatives along these lines must specifically consider the relative suitability of the peri-urban zone vis-à-vis the production of specific commodities as well as potential market opportunities. Those interested in promoting peri-urban agriculture as an element of more sustainable cities cannot afford to take a narrow view that ignores either agro-ecological, economic and regional realities.     

Husbands’ and wives’ risk preferences and improved maize adoption in Tanzania

Research on technology adoption typically assumes that the preferences of a single individual—the household head—determine household-level decisions. This study uses experimentally derived prospect theory-based risk preferences from couples in Tanzania to test whether men's and women's risk preferences, which often diverge, influence the adoption of improved maize varieties. We find that women's risk aversion and men's loss aversion are negatively correlated with improved variety use. The tendency of men to overweight small probabilities is negatively associated with adoption, whereas the tendency of women to do so is positively associated. These findings suggest that technology adoption research should look beyond the preferences of the household head, and that technology promoters should consider targeting both men and women in their education and dissemination efforts.     

建立和完善耕地保护社会监督机制的思路探讨

我国当前的耕地保护社会监督机制还主要依附于行政管理和行政监督,造成当前的社会监督机制缺乏独立性和监督标准,社会监督内容和监督程序不完善。建立和完善耕地保护社会监督机制,除了加强行政监督的基础建设外,关键是要建立相对独立运行的社会监督机制和与行政监督相配合的合作机制。     

A High Road to Sustainability? Wildflower Harvesting,Ethical Trade and Social Upgrading in South Africa's Western Cape

This paper evaluates the outcomes from an ambitious wildflower harvesting programme in South Africa's Western Cape, which has sought to achieve positive outcomes in terms of socio‐economic development and biodiversity conservation. Indigenous wildflowers, harvested according to conservation principles, are processed into ‘Cape Flora’ bouquets and sold into international and domestic markets. The principal supply chain provides an example of ethical trade due to the explicit environmental and social standards that are required at local sites of production. The incorporation of such standards represents an attempt to engender economic and social upgrading within the value chain. In this sense, the programme is consistent with dominant policy discourses, which suggest that exploiting potentially profitable niches within international trade flows represents a ‘high road’ to economic growth and transformation. The paper focuses upon the job creation and social impacts of the programme in the context of efforts to overcome South Africa's deeply entrenched socio‐economic disparities and high poverty levels. Despite impressive growth in production and exports during the global financial crisis, there have been mixed outcomes in terms of benefits to stakeholders at the upstream end of the supply chain. The paper concludes by considering the extent to which local initiatives operating under the framework of ethical trade possess the potential to facilitate effective social and economic upgrading.     

Smarter through social protection? Evaluating the impact of Ethiopia’s safety-net on child cognitive abilities

Ethiopia’s productive safety net is the second largest Social Protection Program in sub-Saharan Africa and has been rolled out to almost 10 million beneficiaries since 2005; its effects are therefore of general interest. We provide the first estimates of its impact on children’s cognitive abilities. To identify impacts of this program, we exploit four rounds of data on a cohort of children surveyed repeatedly between 2002 and 2013. We find a small but significant positive effect of the programme on both numeracy skills and vocabulary. This is driven mainly by children in households that had graduated (left) the programme just before 2013. We argue that this is at least partially related to time allocation: graduates of the programme spent more time in school than continuing beneficiaries. We also find evidence that the maths (though not language) improvement is more pronounced for boys.     

论森林资源保护的社会林业对策

本文阐述了森林资源的物质性、生态性和社会性等三重属性,指出了我国森林资源面临的主要问题,提出了森林资源保护需要整个社会的参与,需要广大群众特别是乡村农民的参与。作者从观念、制度、资源配置、实践等方面论述了森林资源保护的社会林业对策。     

Debating the Politics of Land Occupations

This essay reviews a provocative but flawed volume of case studies of land occupations in Africa, Asia and Latin America and critically examines the arguments advanced by Moyo and Yeros in their introduction and co-authored chapter on Zimbabwe. The editors' core proposition is that the agrarian and national questions are linked in the periphery of capitalism because industrial transformation is incomplete, 'disarticulated' forms of accumulation predominate and dependent states are unable to exercise true sovereignty. The chief agent of struggles for agrarian reform, and the social base of rural social movements that occupy land as a key tactic, is identified as 'the semiproletariat'. The political characteristics of these movements are discussed in the introduction, three continent-wide overviews and several case studies. Most chapters tend not to support the editors' arguments, and sometimes contradict them. These arguments are in any case reductionist and over-schematic. The categories 'semi-proletariat' and 'peasantry' are often elided, and differences of conditions and trajectories are seldom acknowledged. A tendency to economism vitiates discussion of the politics of land. These problems are also in evidence in the chapter on Zimbabwe.     

天保工程区社会保障模式探析

通过分析天然林保护工程给工程区内居民福利带来的变化。提出建立一个形成背景、运行阶段、目标、内容、资金主体及运行方式上都有别于普通保障的天保工程区社会保障模式,该模式有利于社会保障覆盖面的扩大和天然林保护工程的顺利完成,为最终实现统筹城乡的社会保障制度提供了一个发展思路。     

Does sustainable intensification of maize production enhance child nutrition? Evidence from rural Tanzania

Food insecurity, child malnutrition, and land degradation remain persistent problems in sub‐Saharan Africa. Agricultural sustainable intensification (SI) has been proposed as a possible solution to simultaneously address these challenges. Yet there is little empirical evidence on if agricultural management practices and inputs that contribute to SI from an environmental standpoint do indeed improve food security or child nutrition. We use three waves of data from the nationally‐representative Tanzania National Panel Survey to analyze the child nutrition effects of rural households’ adoption of farming practices that can contribute to the SI of maize production. We group households into four categories based on their use of three soil fertility management practices on their maize plots: “Nonadoption”; “Intensification” (use of inorganic fertilizer only); “Sustainable” (use of organic fertilizer, maize–legume intercropping, or both); and “SI” (joint use of inorganic fertilizer with organic fertilizer and/or maize–legume intercropping). The results from multinomial endogenous treatment effects models with the Mundlak–Chamberlain device suggest that use of practices in the “SI” category is associated with improvements in children's height‐for‐age and weight‐for‐age z‐scores relative to “Nonadoption,” particularly for children aged 25–59 months. These effects appear to come through improvements in both crop income and productivity.